


Celestial Architecture

by loveandpride1895



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Coming of Age, Friends to Lovers, Inspired by The Night Circus, M/M, Magical Realism, Original Character(s), Tags Subject to Change, i guess, not quite, sort of fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandpride1895/pseuds/loveandpride1895
Summary: The sun and the moon were given an impossible task.Falling in love was probably inevitable.





	1. some time ago: i

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! This is, I suppose, the love child of my obsessions with Dan and Phil, The Night Circus and Oscar Wilde. An... Eclectic mix, that I hope you'll enjoy! Dan and Phil are merely characters in this, and every word is creative writing, not speculation. 
> 
> I'm not going to promise super-duper regular updates, because I have exams very soon, and starting this was probably... Less than a good idea. 
> 
> Comments much appreciated! 
> 
> Thanks again for reading.

Phil could tell that his father was very, very anxious. He wasn't taking any notice of the fact that the stairs were very nearly bigger than him, nor of the fact that if he tugged any harder on his arm, it may just detach from its socket. His hand was slimy and sweaty, and his grip set into a sort of vice.

Phil could also tell that it maybe wasn't the time to mention any of these things. 

He scrabbled up the stairs as best he could on his tiny, scrawny legs, attempting to keep the scuffing of his best shoes at a minimum. He was also wearing his best trousers. And his best shirt. And his best jacket. And... A tie? 

"Today is a very important day, Phil," his father had said, pushing up the knot with quivering fingers. Phil had opened his mouth to ask why, but by that time, he'd turned away. When Phil's father turned away, question time was over. 

The erratic journey ended abruptly, outside a tall and imposing wood door. Elaborate carvings marked the wood, and the black handle was tarnished by age but not by use. Phil's father lifted his hand over it, then paused for a moment. He glanced at Phil, and smiled a tiny smile, but there was something like regret behind his eyes. Then, he pushed down the handle. 

The door opened slowly, creaking like the bones of an old man unaccustomed to exercise. The room behind it was dimly lit. Phil strained his eyes as his father led him in, vice-like grip loosening slightly. 

There was a rug beneath his feet, intricate and colourful. To his left, a table with a decanter and two glasses. Ahead, a long, wooden writing desk, cluttered with items he couldn't make out in the low light. To his right, (and also his delight) was a fish tank. Illuminated creatures boasting colours that should surely have been impossible weaved in and out of each other, dancing a flowing dance. His eyes widened, then narrowed again in wonder, as he began to break away from his father, who was now standing stock still, carrying a look of gormlessness. He didn't appear to notice himself drop Phil's hand. 

Phil made for the tank, and flattened his palms against the glass. He followed them with his gaze, choosing one to focus on, then another. They were fascinating... Beautiful and... Strange. There was something about them he couldn't quite put his finger on. Something... Something...

There!

It glitched. 

It was there... And then it was somewhere else. The neon blue one. It had just... Serenely phased out of existence, then calmly slotted itself back in again. Phil's mouth dropped open, just slightly, and he squinted at it. 'Do it again,' he urged subliminally. But it just continued to swim. 

Come on, come on. 

There!

The orange one did it too. 

It was magic, it must have been magic. 

There's nothing else it could have been. Fish don't just-

"He's quick, I'll give you that. Most of them don't notice for a while."

Phil jumped and whirled around. 

The writing desk, which had been emptier than an alcoholic's bottle just a second before... Was very much occupied. And illuminated. By apparently... No light source. A woman was reclined in the chair, long cigarette balanced between her fingers, and a smirk marring her lipstick coated mouth. Her inky hair was piled on top of her head, and held in place by a bejewelled clip, from which a thick black veil hung down. Her eyes were concealed. 

"He... Likes fish."

"Hmm. That's likely to have helped."

She pushed her cigarette into a crystal ash tray and stood, sweeping around the desk ask though expecting it to move for her. Phil tensed his shoulders and tilted his chin to the floor, as she approached him. In his peripheral vision, he could see his father in much the same position. 

Crouched down to his height, elegant legs folding effortlessly, and smiled from her mouth. Phil wondered what her eyes were doing under the veil. 

"Hello there Phil. My name's Emmeline. Do you like the fish?"

He was still and silent for a moment, then began to nod slowly. 

"Oh, I am glad. And what can you tell me about the fish?"

He glanced to his father for guidance, but he was still and his gaze grounded. 

"They're... Really pretty."

Emmeline laughed. It somehow managed to be simultaneously campfire-warm and icy. 

"Anything else."

He gulped, and then lifted a tiny quivering index finger to the tank. 

"They... I don't know. Disappear."

"Good, good. They do, don't they?" 

Phil nodded. 

"And what do you have to say about that?" 

"That's impossible." 

"Excellent, Phil! But they did it anyway. Why do you think that is?" 

Phil frowned. 

"I... Don't know."

"No, of course you don't. You've never been anywhere like here before, have you?"

"No."

"That's good. You weren't supposed to have. Now, Phil... I have a little test for you. No no, don't look so worried! You can't possibly have prepared for it. Will you follow me?"

She began to sweep over to the left corner of the room, beside the writing desk, also inexplicably illuminated. Under the light was a small round table, and on it, a small collection of marbles. She stood behind the desk, tall and imposing, but he remained still. She beckoned him over, and he found his feet moving without his brain telling them too. His steps were clumsy, but scuffing his best shoes was no longer his concern. 

He arrived opposite her, only just able to see over the top of the table. 

"Okay, Phil. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about the fish. How the fish was there, and then wasn't. Can you do that? Close your eyes if you want to."

He didn't, but he did think about the fish. 

"Now, I want you to think about how that happened, when it shouldn't have. Wasn't that amazing? That it could do that?"

Phil nodded.

"Yes, yes it was, it really was. Now, I want you to use that... Use how it managed to do that, and how it shouldn't have but did, and how amazing it was. Use it... And move one of those marbles. Tell one of those marbles to come to you."

Phil frowned, but scrunched up his brow, and glared at the red marble. He heard his father's breath hitch behind him. Nothing happened. 

"Don't focus on one marble. All of them. They'll decide which one moves."

Phil took in a breath, and flattened his brow. He allowed his vision to blur, and gazed at the collection. Almost intangibly, the pile began to twitch. It shuddered, it parted, then rather leisurely, a marble began to roll towards him. It was opal coloured and shiny, reflecting the impossible light from above. 

Emmeline's mouth smiled.

"The moon," she turned to face his father, "He's the moon."

He nodded, quite erratically. She turned back to Phil.

"Pick it up."

Carefully, he took it between his fingers with his left hand, and placed it into the palm of his right. Immediately, it began to melt, seeping through his skin. He gasped, as it burned for a second, then the pain was gone and so was the marble. 

Emmeline moved around the table, and cupped his cheek with her hand. 

"You're the moon." 

***

Phil watched as the figure of his father grew further and further away, stretching off into an abstract figure in the distance. At the last moment before he became an incomprehensible blob, his left arm raised in what could have been a wave. 

Then, he was gone. 

He was going to his new house, he was told. Somewhere to do impossible things. Like the fish. He was quite worried that he'd disappear, like them. He didn't want to do that, even if he'd come back like they did. He didn't want to find out where they went when they stopped being real. 

He was driven past houses and shops for a while, then they began to thin out and give way for green, rolling hills and trees. There weren't many animals to look at, which made him a bit bored on the journey. Which, rather inconveniently, allowed him to think. And to remember. 

There wasn't an awful lot of warmth in the house he shared with his father. He'd gone to school, been told lots of facts, come home, been fed and gone to his room. It had been nicer when his brother was there. His brother had made him laugh, and taught him card tricks that were like the impossible fish only not real. His brother had been like a bonfire in a desolate wood. And then his brother had left. But not like Phil had left. It had been his choice. He'd grown up and he'd left. 

Phil had simply been plucked from the beige and deposited into a world of psychedelic colour. 

The weight of nerves in his stomach almost made him want to stay in the beige. But the impossible fish. The moving marbles. The moon. 

He was young and he was curious. 

After some time, the car pulled up outside a large house. Phil knelt up on his seat, and pressed his nose against the glass. It was a very impressive house, with three stories that he could see, but he was already learning not to go on appearances. The stone was dark, and the elaborate gables gave something of a gothic appearance. There were many, many windows that suggested many, many rooms and a long, winding driveway leading to a tall and heavy looking front door. 

Homely wasn't the word Phil would use. 

But... It was an adventure. 

The driver's face came to the window, and he wafted his hand twice to shoo Phil's nose away from the glass before he opened the glass. He was holding his bag in his left hand, and Phil offered to carry it, but the driver declined the offer with a resigned smile. Shoes creating a symphony of crunches on the gravel, they began to make their way to the door. 

Phil wasn't quite tall enough to reach the knocker, so the driver did it, knocking twice gently. 

The sound created was not proportional to the knock. It was far far louder. 

There was a thirty second or so wait, which Phil filled by fiddling nervously with his sleeves and kicking the gravel into little piles with his right foot. Then, the door swung open. It was Emmeline, still veiled.

"Ah... Right on time!" she beamed. Swiftly, she took Phil's bag from the driver, and said, "We have it from here, thank you."

Then, she ushered Phil inside and promptly slammed the door in his face.

She held out her arms theatrically. 

"Welcome home!" 

Phil shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. She clapped her hands together decisively, creating a noise not dissimilar to the one made by the knocker. 

"Now... First things first, you have a housemate. I think it'd be good to introduce you first. And then I'll explain what you'll be doing together. It's something very special, I can assure you." 

Phil nodded slowly. Emmeline smiled, and turned her back and began to breeze away. Phil got the impression that he should follow. 

He followed her down a long corridor, with large paintings hung on every wall, mostly in shades of deep red and black. The walls too were dark, but there seemed to be light exuding from the ceiling itself. Impossible light didn't faze him as much as it had the first time but... It still fazed him a bit. 

They turned a corner, and entered what could be described as a drawing room. It was somewhat softer than the corridor, decorated in shades of pink and pale blue, and furnished with plush sofas and oak chairs. On one of them, sat a boy about Phil's age, swinging his feet against the chair legs and looking at the floor. His mouth was set into a small scowl, and his brown curly hair falling into his eyes. His hands were gripping the armrests. He tilted his head to look up when Emmeline coughed. He stopped kicking. She put her hand between Phil's shoulder blades and guided him forwards. 

"Phil... This is Dan. Dan... This is Phil." 

Dan gave Phil a look like he thought he might bite for a second, then his gaze softened. 

"Hi Phil," he said softly. 

Phil opened his mouth, and it hung open for a moment as he looked Dan up and down. He was clothed in all black, and should by all accounts, with his kicking and his scowl, have been exuding darkness. 

But something about him... Was glowing. 

"I'm the sun apparently. Don't know why," he said, with a half laugh that could have been self-deprecating.

'I do,' Phil nearly said, and didn't. 

He just closed his mouth, and smiled back.


	2. some time ago: ii

Phil settled himself into the sofa that was pushed up to Dan's chair. He gazed around the room, half expecting the curtains to disappear or the sky to fall in, but at that moment, everything was solid. Dan was looking at the floor, with his hands folded in his lap. His thumbs were tip-tapping over each other, and his feet had resumed their kicking. 

Emmeline had left the room, under the guise of giving them, "A moment to bond without me prying." For whatever reason, Phil didn't think that was the primary reason for her absence. He ran his hand along his jaw, then leaned in closer to Dan.

"Where do you think she's gone?" he asked, voice defaulting to a whisper for reasons beyond his conscious comprehension. Dan shrugged without looking up. 

"I dunno. Left us to bond." 

He unfolded his hands, and held one out to Phil.

"Hi, I'm Dan."

"I'm Phil."

He took the hand and shook it rather stiffly. God... It was warm. 

"Wow, her plan worked," Dan deadpanned, "We bonded."

"Not really. We knew each other's names already." 

"But we've touched now. We have each other's germs."

"I guess."

A few seconds of silence passed, then Dan huffed and sat back in his chair. His face screwed up into a frown. 

"I don't know about you, but I really want to know what's happening."

Phil nodded. 

"I do."

"Do you think she's going to tell us?"

"I do," he said with a small smile.

Dan smiled back, but it was a bit of a funny smile. 

"Good for you."

"What, do you not?" 

He sighed, and sank down even further until he was almost folded over, body creased into the chair. 

"I'm going to wait and see."

Phil nodded slowly, then asked, "So you haven't been told anything either?"

Dan shook his head.

"Just that a magic marble decided that I'm the sun."

"I'm the moon," Phil added, matter of factly. 

"Nice."

"What do you think that means?"

Dan laughed, rather drily. 

"That marbles aren't very smart. I'm not... Bright."

Phil bit his lip, then said, "I think you are." He was going for light, but it came out close to earnest. 

Another laugh.

"You need glasses."

Phil looked at the floor. 

"...I actually do."

"Well there you go."

Phil wasn't quite sure whether to return the laugh. Instead, he decided to U-turn the conversation again. 

"So when did you get here?"

Dan glanced up at the clock on the mantel piece. 

"Only a few hours ago. I-"

One of the vases fell off the mantel piece and shattered, then turned immediately to dust. Dan and Phil whipped around to face each other in surprise, both sets of eyes wild and shocked. The room was beginning to shudder, only a little, but it was definitely becoming more violent. More ornaments were skidding and shattering, paintings flying off walls. Phil stood in something of a flailing manner, and the second he did, the sofa he had been sitting on crumbled. Dan let out a strangled noise of distress and stood, hands flying to his mouth, and his chair crumbled too. The displaced ornaments were turning to ash at the corners of the room, until only volcanic looking black piles were left. The windows were closing in and... They were trapped, they were going to be trapped, and that's why they were brought there and they were going to be killed, impossibly killed and the light was disappearing and-

Emmeline's voice rang out, light and airy. 

"Sorry about that, boys. Little test. I like little tests. I want you to rebuild the room."

Phil blinked into the darkness. 

"I... What?" 

"I'll give you a little light." 

The apparently omnipresent light from nowhere flooded the room. Phil was met with Dan's face, mouth hanging open like a goldfish. 

"Just think about the impossible things." 

And then, there was the distinct feeling that her presence was gone. 

Silence. 

Stillness.

***

"What the hell just happened?"

"I-"

"WHAT THE HELL... just happened?"

"I don't-"

"I mean! Things like that don't happen. Oh, we're in a nice cosy room, waiting for the nice lady who's going to look after us and then-"

"Dan!" 

Dan stopped, and lowered his hands that had been wildly gesticulating over his head. He pressed the fingertips of his left hand into his lips. He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. 

"Right..."

Phil looked around the cremated cell that was the room, then shrugged in an attempt to appear nonchalant. He had a feeling he'd end up doing a lot of that. 

"Let's get to work."

Dan scoffed. 

"What the hell do you... How the hell are we going to... God. Why are we even going to..?" He gestured vaguely around the room. 

Phil frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Why are we going to take orders from that... Weirdo?"

Phil was almost certain she was listening, and wondered very much if Dan was going to regret that question. He swallowed. 

"Because we're probably going to rot in here if we don't," he pointed at each wall in turn, "See? No door."

Dan opened his mouth to protest, then sighed and visibly deflated. "Yeah. We're back to 'how the hell are we going to,' then." 

"That... I have no idea of."

He sank down and sat cross legged on the floor. After a moment's deliberation, Dan did the same. He put his fist beneath his chin. 

"Right... She said think about the impossible things."

"Yeah..."

"Have you seen a lot of those recently too then?"

"Yeah."

"All the lights, the decanter..."

"It was fish for me." 

"Fish... And the marbles?" 

"And the marbles." 

"Right. So how did they work?" 

Phil sighed, "They didn't. That's the point. They didn't work. They didn't fit."

Dan groaned. 

"Not helpful." 

"Sorry. So how can we use them, then?" 

"Right..." Dan uncrossed his legs, and brought his knees us to his chest. He screwed his face up in thought for a moment, "The decanter. When I saw the decanter, it was empty and then it wasn't."

"And the fish... It was there and then it wasn't." 

"And now the furniture... It was furniture, and then it wasn't. So how do we make the ash back into furniture?" 

"I don't know," Phil said, shrugging again," It wasn't me that made the fish disappear." 

Dan's head snapped up. He sprung to his feet suddenly, and clicked his fingers. He pointed his index finger at Phil, who was staring back at him inquisitively. 

"But you did make the marble glow, right?" 

"Glow?" 

"Yeah."

"No... I made it move." 

Dan frowned.

"You made it move?" His eyes widened, as a confused form of realisation dawned on him, "You made it move... And I made it glow."

And then it hit Phil too. He leapt to his feet, and stood opposite Dan.

"You're the sun... I'm the moon." 

A smile crept onto Dan's lips.

"I make the energy... You use it." 

Phil nodded erratically. 

Dan scrambled over to the pile of ash that had been Phil's sofa. He knelt beside it, and beckoned Phil over to do the same. He narrowed his eyes, staring hard into the powdery blackness. 

"You remember what the sofa looked like, yeah?" 

"Good."

He clenched his fists, and bore his gaze into the centre of the pile. Phil watched him with intrigue. He was glowing, he was sure he was glowing. And God... Those eyes. He only tore his gaze away when a dash of light appeared from the black. 

"Make it come back, Phil." 

Phil folded his hands into his lap, and pressed his palms together. He pressed the image of the sofa to the forefront of his mind, right behind his eyes and focused on the energy radiating from Dan and the ash. They were weaving together, the two energy vantage points, wrapping around him like a cocoon. At first, nothing seemed to be happening, but then, hot embers took root in his core, and something tipped. 

The sofa began to take shape. 

It came together slowly, looking gelatinous and malleable at first. It was small too, way too small. But whatever was happening in his core began to grow, and so did the sofa. Bigger and bigger, until it was its original size, and then, it began to solidify. It became real. It was perfect. He let out a rather undignified squealy-gasp. 

He turned to Dan to share his shocked celebration, but his eyes were screwed together. There was a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead, peeping out from under his curls. Phil reached out a tentative hand, recoiled it for a second, then placed it on his shoulder. Dan's eyes snapped open. He sucked in a large breath when he saw the sofa, eyes wide in surprise. 

"...my god," he breathed. 

"Well done boys." 

Simultaneously, they jumped, and whipped their heads around. Emmeline was standing behind them. 

Because of course she was. 

"That'll do. I never liked this room anyway."

Dan placed his hand chest in rather a theatrical manner, and said in something of an accusatory, strangled tone, "That earthquake... thing wasn't very nice."

Emmeline chuckled. 

"Apologies. It proved me right though. You can do what you were brought here to do."

"And what's that?" Phil asked, suspicion staining his words. 

Emmeline smiled. 

"You're going to build me a house from absolutely nothing."

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on that tumblr thing if you like!  
> http://loveandpride1895.tumblr.com/


End file.
